Why some manuscripts are desk rejected?

Three months since the start of the Business & Management Compass - the University of Economics – Varna double-blind peer reviewed journal. Rejection rate: 81%. Acceptance rate: 19%.

Why some manuscripts are desk rejected?

Some manuscripts do not follow formal requirements:

• Тhe paper template is not used.
• Submitted manuscripts are checked for plagiarism before sending for review. If the uniqueness of the text is below 85%, the manuscript is returned for revisions.
• The instructions for structuring the paper or writing the abstract are not followed. I recommend the IMRAD format for structuring the paper.

Some manuscripts do not follow rules in statistics:

• The proposed regression models are a mix of momentary and periodically aggregated variables (covariates). This is a common error.
• Before making regression models, several checks have to be done. These checks usually are not done and not reported in the paper.
• The assumption that the dependencies are linear excludes real life dependencies among variables, which are usually non-linear. Other models and methods have to be used.
• If we have variables on a Likert scale (strongly agree ... strongly disagree), we cannot use them directly in a linear regression model.
• Categorical variables must be presented by dummy variables in a regression model.

Some authors use regression models without following the mentioned basic rules in statistics. In this case, the Editor-in-Chief of the Business & Management Compass journal  or the responsible Editor recommends using other methods for analyzing the dataset.